Columbus and the Valley

Hope Is In the House

 

We said goodbye to John Robertson Kinnett at First Presbyterian Church this morning. That beautiful room was filled by a great collection of people and I particularly enjoyed seeing Claire Kinnett Tate, Bright Kinnett Wright, Frazer Kinnett, Jean Kinnett Oliver, John Robertson (“Bob”) Kinnett, III, and Josephine (“Jodie”) Kinnett Klumpenhower and their cadre of young people, all with that very strong family resemblance. My memories of the Kinnett family were when the six siblings were small children. My father worked for many years at Kinnett Dairies and because of the Kinnett’s emphasis on family, I got some priceless time with my father during many hot summers in rural Georgia. My daddy drove ice cream trucks and milk trucks through the sun blanched region around Columbus.

He would nudge me out of a deep sleep in the early morning, well before the sun and we’d go to breakfast. The smell of coffee and bacon, a cold glass of Kinnett Dairies milk and hours and miles in an open-sided dairy truck, weaving a trail in and out of shady gravel parking lots, and under the boughs of giant oaks. Dad would read the order sheet, and we’d spring out of the truck and into the frosty cloud of supercooled air coming through from a place every boy should get the chance to explore.

He taught me how to pull the orders, stack them on the hand truck and then came the best part. I got to watch him interact with all kinds of people. Large and small grocery store owners and proprietors, convenience stores clerks, school cafeteria workers, restauranteurs and every kind of curb and vegetable market clerk and he never met a stranger. He didn’t know any of their names, but he could and did tell me stories about them. Then, we’d roll back into the dairy in the afternoon and go up the stairs and into the business office, where my left handed dad would absolutely smoke a manual calculator and hand-draw big gothic looking letters and numbers as he checked up for the route. He always took great pride in his job at the dairy and I am thankful for the strong influence John Kinnett had on my family’s sense of family.

This morning, my mom, Ann, met me at the Columbus and the Valley offices and we walked to the church. After the visitation, we walked on north and west from the church to Uptown Vietnam Cuisine where I successfully connected someone I love to something I love. The wonton soup there has coaxed my taste buds into full flower and it was fun watching mom enjoy the dish so much while being frustrated by how best to deliver it to her mouth. You know from the way that soup smells that it is hardwired to hit the ahh center of your brain. Everyone has their own style of eating it. I like to watch people who have obviously spent their entire lives using chopsticks. Mom and I had a nice day together and it is pretty special being as old I am and being able to share a meal and several hours with the person who brought you into the world almost 65 years ago.

My surgical wounds are healing, the antibiotic is returning health to my gut and reports from my latest scans and lab work are encouraging. My kidney function is high, the holes in my spine that kidney cancer had devoured are being replaced by recalcified bone and I appear to be on a trajectory to be able to have surgical/radiological intervention to stabilize my spine and be returned at some point to more robust health.

I’ve been used to hearing bad news for the whole of my recent history — Eight. And. A. Half. Years. Interspersed in these months there are pockets where, despite your physical limitations, you get delicious slices of the summer peach of the cancer timeline. No drugs. Diminished side effects. The total eclipsing of your newest, clothes horse, food-centered normal over the hot, angry ogre of chronic disease, just at that moment when you can take off the protective glasses and bask in the golden glow of a 360-degree sunset. I feel total, open-armed thankfulness for this day and a warmth radiating from my bones that only hope can ignite. Fear is cold, but easily driven out when hope is in the house.

 

Drug Side Effects Still Taking a Toll

On the surface it seems we have been successful in relegating my case of stage IV renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer) into acting like a chronic disease. Something like diabetes. Something you can live with and keep at bay with medication. It doesn’t appear to be actively trying to snuff me out and thankfully it also appears that the oral chemotherapy I’m taking daily, although it is making me very nauseated and giving me constant diarrhea, has done a number on at least two tumors on my left adrenal gland. The tumors are gone!

Jill and I met with Dr. Andy Pippas yesterday morning. Except for a slightly elevated billirubin count, my lab work is exceptional. The higher than normal billirubin is a direct result of my taking the Votrient, which is an oral chemotherapy drug called a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Our discussion with Dr. Pippas went toward the shocking weight loss I’ve experienced — now almost 100 pounds! He looked at my chart and proclaimed that I’d lost about 10 more pounds since I last saw him just 4 weeks ago. He is concerned, as are we, that I’m really starting to lose muscle mass and tone.

We talked about my nausea a lot during this visit, I guess because it has gotten worse over the past month. I am really having a difficult time eating almost everything EXCEPT Vietnamese food. I’m surviving on a dish at Uptown Vietnam Cuisine called hu thieu, which is a pork broth based soup, similar to pho (pronounced  /f?/). It fills me up. It makes it happy and it is a very healthy dish, according to Beth Bussey, my nutritionist. Other than that meal, I am finding it very difficult to eat a single other thing without feeling nauseated. For a former fat foodie, this is really quite difficult to take.

Dr. Pippas prescribed a timed-release patch containing a drug called ondansetron (trade name Zofran), and the idea was for it to provide me with a constant infusion of the drug for a solid week and keep my nausea at bay. I applied the patch yesterday afternoon and so far, I have been nauseated almost every waking moment. I’m not sure if I’m experiencing a “breaking in” period or whether there is something else going on, but I’m at the edge of a dry heave all the time. So far, today hasn’t been much fun.

Dr. Pippas also told me about another product which is a wristband that gently stimulates the median nerve in the wrist and signals the “vomit center” in the brain not to fire. Who knew the brain had a vomit center? I am doing some research on that product now and may add it to my anti-nausea regime to see if we can get me back to a better place.

So, all things considered, I am in a pretty good position right now for someone with stage IV cancer. I’m not in immediate danger of dying. I’m able to enjoy my family and friends. And, even though I have a real intimate relationship with my toilet, I can enjoy and fairly respectable amount of good time during a day. As I see it, things could be a lot worse. If this is all there is, I’m happy to have it.

The other news is that I’m feeling like I might be able to write again and I hope that will translate into my being more communicative in this blog. Time will tell. In the meantime, I hope you have a fabulous Christmas with your family and friends. If you celebrate other holidays at this time of the year, I hope yours is a great one! For all my brother and sister cancer sufferers out there, hang on, there’s a better year coming.